Moving to a bigger teat

[alanasmum]

I posted a message last week about my daugher drinking less milk and was advised that she needs to be on an appropriate sized teat to make sure she is not working too hard to get the milk.

She is 5 months old and was still on a small teat as I had previously tried her on a medium teat and she was drinking the milk too fast and throwing up as a result.

In the last few days I have tried her again on the medium and Y-cut teats and she is finishing the bottle but is again drinking too fast (200ml in about 5-8 minutes!) and is throwing up afterwards.

I do think she needs to move to a faster teat as on the small teats it takes her 20 minutes to finish a bottle (and she gets bored and frustrated by the end) but the medium and Y teats are just too fast for her.

What do I do? We use the Pigeon brand of bottles and teats. Is it worth trying a completely different brand? Or is there a transition period of a few days/weeks until she gets used to sucking the teat at an appropriate speed?

Thank you.

[the pero clinic]

Dear Alanasmum,

I am always reluctant to advise parents to change brands of teats and bottles (particularly in a forum such as this where I can’t actually see what the bub is doing!) as so many parents seem to spend an absolute fortune in playing trial and error anyway.

As a starting point, try to impose some feeding breaks, using the faster teat you already have, to reduce the large formula intake in a short time. Either remove the bottle for a break, or replace it with a dummy if this is preferred.

Otherwise, you may like to try a different kind of medium flow teat. Buy a cheap standard bottle, and an inexpensive medium flow teat to trial it. (You might also have a friend willing to loan a bottle just to try a different teat).

As I have written before, I am simply not able to recommend specific teats for babies based on an internet ‘consultation’. There is much more to an appropriate teat for individual babies than just the flow rate.

You can experiment yourself – just remember that the most expensive teats and bottles are not necessarily the best ones.

the pero clinic